Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
But I knew he would.
I wasn’t surprised when he reached the top of the stairs. Because he’d told me he was the villain, but that he was always going to save me. Even if it was going to get him killed.
They say in times of great stress, people can lift things their body physically shouldn’t be able to. There was no greater stress on a human psyche than insanity.
Jen—Jade should not have been able to drag Gage to the chair she’d positioned across from me. Should not have been able to lift him onto that chair and sit his terrifyingly limp body on it.
But she did.
And worse, his eyes were open the entire time.
They were glassy and uneasy until she propped him on the chair without binds.
She cupped his cheek. “Ah, you thought you’d seen the last of me, my love,” she whispered. Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
After she straightened, the glassy look was gone. His eyes were ice, filled with panic and death and violence. It was a glare that promised revenge. Brutality. But it was encased within his still body.
Too still.
His limbs were slouched unnaturally on the chair, knees knocking into each other and splayed on the side. His arms were drooped over the arms of the chair, wrists dangling limply.
Jade looked to me, her almond eyes glowing. “Nimbex.” She waved the syringe after picking it up off the floor. “It’s a nerve agent that paralyzes you but keeps you conscious at the same time. Used primarily for preparing the body for general anesthesia and surgery, but I think it’ll work just fine for what I’ve got in mind.”
I blinked at her rapidly, but then my eyes went to Gage’s.
“Anesthesia isn’t part of the menu,” she continued, pacing the room. “Because I want to make you hurt.” She yanked at Gage’s neck, jerking him to face her and then letting him go brutally so his neck lolled forward.
She propped it back up again, caressing his cheek before straightening and looking to me.
“I’ve got connections in the drug business,” she said. “I’m sure by now, Gage has filled you in on our history. He’s so terribly honest for a villain. Well, my family, the ones he blew up”—she narrowed her eyes at him—“their business was drugs. But not just the ones our Gage is a slave to. No, we dabbled in all sorts. That’s how I found out about the one that almost killed you.”
She scowled at me, walking forward to slap me.
It might’ve stung, but it was the utter fury and helplessness in Gage’s eyes that hurt more.
“You were all so fucking blind, weren’t you? I was right there in front of your faces the entire time. Women will always be the demise of men who think they’re strong.”
She smiled again.
“And you were the stupidest of them all. Because it was so easy.”
Her smile was gone, as if I’d screamed at her out loud like I was in my head.
“Why the fuck didn’t you die?” she hissed. “It would’ve been so much easier if you’d burned. But then I got to play with you after that. It was fun. Destroying you slower. But I was getting bored. That’s why I upped the dose. But you weren’t predictable, so I couldn’t give you enough. And then you wouldn’t fucking die. Then I wouldn’t have had to get messy and kill that idiot, frame Gage for it.” She smiled. “Though I will admit it was fun, playing with him, cutting him up just like a crazy man with a knife might.”
She sauntered over to Gage, leaning over seductively and yanking his blade out of its sheath.
His eyes bulged.
I tasted bile at the thought of her using it on him. Of him having another scar when that knife had already inflicted enough.
When life had already inflicted enough.
I exhaled when she straightened and clutched the knife before pacing again.
“Women can be villains too,” she said, her voice shrill. Unstable. “That’s the kicker here. We’re all in a post-feminist world, right?” She looked to Gage. “Even you bikers seem to understand the importance of equal rights. Maybe not in theory but especially in practice, considering every single one of those notorious ‘old ladies’ leads you men around by your dicks.”
She gave Gage a look, one that told me her sanity was frayed, crushed, nothing but a memory, if it ever existed at all. I couldn’t believe that she’d managed to hold it together, hide all that behind red lipstick and pencil skirts. It took a special and deadly type of insanity to hide it like that.
Gage was dangerous.
Deadly.
But he couldn’t hide that.
This woman could. And fear circulated through every part of my body thinking that meant she’d be the one who ended him.
She scratched her head with the barrel of her gun. “You see, all I wanted was to be that for you, Gage. Why couldn’t I be that?” Her voice was low. Pleading.